My dad is the smartest man I know. Not only does he know the answers to most Jeopardy questions, he can also build anything, fix anything, sell everything, read people, problem solve, question the status quo, inspire others, crack jokes, remember just about fact every he’s ever heard, debate with the best of them, and invent ingenious products, in theory, every day. When I think of “smart,” he’s my benchmark.

Therefore, when I saw a graphic this past week made up of two frames, the thought of him helped me make sense of what I was viewing. In this graphic, the frame on the left was titled “Knowledge”; it was a simple box with a black outline, filled with random black dots. The frame on the right was titled “Experience”; this second box was exactly like the first with a simple black outline, filled with random black dots, but in this box the dots were all connected by thin black lines.

A simple graphic on the surface. Profound in its meaning for education.

My dad is the epitome of the “Experience” box. Sure, he would do well on Jeopardy because of his great memory for miscellaneous factoids, but it’s because of his life experiences he is so smart. It has been his experiences that connect his dots; his experiences that allow his knowledge to shine. Without a lifetime of opportunities to put his knowledge of math, English, history, language and science to work, these subjects he learned back in the 1950’s would be meaningless. Because he had opportunities in his life to work with the earliest computers, travel the world in the Navy, and experiment with his career, he can seamlessly make connections between seemingly disconnected events. He can find solutions to insurmountable challenges. He can make sense of the senseless.

What does all this mean for education, though?

It means our kids need opportunities to put their knowledge to work, because it’s these opportunities that will become the experiences, creating a generation who can build, fix, sell, question, inspire and invent. Our kids needs these experiences during school – time to volunteer, work part time, build small businesses, invent new programs, solve real problems, grow gardens, take apart old electronics, swim, play, travel. With these experiences, and with us supporting them along the way, our kids will walk out of high school with more than just a box filled with historical dates, comma rules, and memorized facts.

Our teachers can help by providing assignments with real audiences. They can stop with the meaningless, rote homework. Stop with the quiz, after test, after assessment cycle. Stop with the mundane worksheet lessons recycled year-over-year.

As a community, we need to ask our schools to start helping our kids not only fill the box on the left, but also make connections between those dots in order to ensure their success in our interconnected world. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Thanks, Dad, for reminding me that facts are the foundation, but it’s in the experience wherein the wisdom lies.

In the wake of all that transpired this past week, culminating in the Dallas standoff, I found myself thinking about the division in our country. This idea that permeates society, suggesting someone is either pro-one side or pro-the other, but not both. An idea perpetuated by news outlets and social media. An idea that makes it feel as if we have to choose a side -- when we know that neither side, exclusively, feels quite right. Isn’t it okay to care about it all? All at the same time?

This notion of “having to pick sides” left me thinking about education, about the challenges facing our local district and schools that systematically rush us to judgement, forcing us to “pick a side.” Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, the issues of this past week can serve to remind us that challenges don’t have to be mutually exclusive?

Let’s take the issue of inter-district transfer students as an example. I hear arguments on both sides of this issue. Arguments suggesting we need to eliminate them. Arguments suggesting we need to keep them. Isn’t it just possible we currently have too many, but still need a small number of these kids throughout all our schools? Too few may result in unintended consequences, and too many has resulted in the challenges we face today. The support from both sides is compelling; however, what if the answer lies somewhere in between?

Let’s take the issue of traffic. We can’t eliminate it all. Our communities’ residents drive. They drive to work. They drive their kids to school. The drive to the grocery store. They own multiple cars and their kids drive, too. And much of our driving time happens when schools are beginning and ending. This causes traffic nightmares. Unfortunately, we are a busy lot with people to see and things to do, so eliminating traffic completely isn’t realistically possible. But do we have to endure a traffic situation that perpetually gets worse year-over-year? Again, I’m suggesting the answer lies somewhere in between “like it was in the 1960’s” and “I’m forced to leave my home an additional thirty minutes earlier in order to get to work on time.”

Let’s look at one more issue -- fundraising. We live in the Los Alamitos Unified School District, a public school system the last time I checked, but time-and-time again we are caught up in the belief that in order for our schools to run and our kids to participate in sports, we need to shell out thousands of dollars. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the fact the we send them to a public school, in-and-of-itself, mean that the education our kids receive is “publically” funded -- in another word, free? That our kids can’t be held from an activity or program because of either an inability or an unwillingness of a family to pay? Again, I’m not suggesting that fundraising be cut completely, but I am suggesting that our district’s fundraising practices be closely re-evaluated. My guess is the fundraising answer lies somewhere between “nothing” and “I’m going to need to take out a second mortgage.”

An answer to our concerns as parents isn’t going to always be black and white. The answers are going to take a willingness on our part to stand on principles and have our voices heard. And our voices aren’t going to argue, offend, degrade, demean, or attack; rather, they will question, discuss and debate.

And somewhere in the middle, with a little give-and-take -- and without having to pick a side -- we’ll find our mutually “inclusive” solutions.

Hot dogs, watermelon, barbeques, apple pie, pool parties, bike parades and fireworks. Nothing is more American than the 4th of July.

Whenever I think about the 4th of July, I wonder, in addition to what time the grill will be ready, what it must have been like back in 1776 during the time of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, a group of like-minded men who were venturing into an independence untested and unprecedented. They didn’t know the future as a certainty. They didn’t know how their Declaration would play out. They didn’t know their own role in how they were changing the world. They only knew they had a problem that needed solving.

From some of the greatest thinkers in American history is a lesson. A lesson from which we can all learn a little something about how to help our kids be their best selves.

The 4th of July brings families together and inevitably brings questions from long-lost Aunt Martha and Uncle Ron targeted at our kids intended to make small talk. I remember these questions from my childhood like they were yesterday. One stands out among the rest: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I even find myself asking this same question of kids when I try to make small talk; it just rolls off my tongue.

This past weekend I spent some time wondering about this question. What is it really asking? What do the adults really want to know? What does it suggest? I came away thinking that the question implies that our kids are destined to work for others. That they will become a cog in a larger machine: doctors who work for hospitals, engineers who work for cities, teachers who work for school districts, managers who work for Fortune 500 companies. Do these “jobs” create fulfillment? Do these “jobs” keep us happy? Or are they jobs that simply require us to take a laundry list of classes to satisfy some requirement established by an unknown entity, so we can work until it’s time to retire?

I got to thinking that the question should be much different. The question should be, “What problem do you want to solve when you grow up?” A question like this gets kids thinking about passion and intent. This questions lends itself to helping our kids discover their educational purpose. Their learning becomes less about completing the laundry list and more about gaining the skills they are going to need to solve their identified problem: doctors who want to cure cancer, engineers who want to build reservoirs for clean water in third world countries, teachers who want to eradicate illiteracy, businessmen who want to build systems to make commerce more readily accessible to everyone.

This is the work that isn’t just a job, work that creates fulfillment and potentially changes the world.

My argument is simply that with a mindset focused on solving problems, we will have kids more engaged in their schooling, more aware of the world around them, more focused on building skills, more interested in gaining interconnected, cross-curricular experience than just memorizing isolated bits of knowledge.

When I talk to people about the future of education, this is the conversation I’m going to start having. This is conversation that will get our schools to start thinking outside of the 200-year-old box of classes in isolation and content for the sake of content, rather than for the sake of intent.

When I think back to Jefferson, Adams and Franklin, I am again struck by the problems they solved. Could they have dreamed up our Declaration of Independence simply by wanting be a writer or a politician “when they grew up”? I don’t think so.

When you sit down for your next barbeque, I hope I’ve given you one more nugget to chew on.